A Throaty Call Of The Wild: Frog Takes Up City Life

NEWPORT NEWS — A small discovery -- the first documented sighting in Newport News of a common frog -- gives a glimpse of nature amongst humans.

Slogging though mud and tall grass in the gathering dusk, not many yards away from the glittering buildings of Port Warwick, Kory Steele picks out the sounds of the frog chorus:

That baaaa sound, almost like a sheep's, is the call of the narrow-mouthed toad.

That funny chuckle-and-grunt sound comes from the leopard frog.

That higher-pitched trilling? The green treefrog.

Then comes the sound that has brought Steele to this acre-or-so patch of meadow and woods in midtown Newport News:

The mating call of the squirrel treefrog. It sounds kind of like a duck quacking.

"It should be called the duck treefrog, really," says Steele.

Steele, a 29-year-old environmental scientist pursuing graduate studies at Christopher Newport University, has made a small but significant discovery.

Last summer, he found a squirrel treefrog in Oyster Point, on the other side of Jefferson Avenue. None had ever been documented in Newport News before. "I thought it was a fluke," he says.

Then, last week, he found a sizeable colony of the small critters on this as-yet-undeveloped piece of Port Warwick. He also found a smaller group in Oyster Point.

Construction equipment has rolled across the ground here, pressing down the soil and creating small pools from the recent rains. It's an ideal spot for frogs to lay their eggs and for tadpoles to grow from those eggs.

When this land is eventually paved over and built upon, of course, that breeding spot will be gone.

Don't misunderstand -- this is not a story about some endangered species in danger of losing irreplaceable habitat. The squirrel treefrog is fairly common and has habitat aplenty. It's found all along the coastal plain of the southern Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, from southeast Virginia to Texas. So it's not that much of a surprise that the frogs are here.

Still, Steele's finds are the first verified sightings of them in Newport News, at the northern edge of the frog's range. It's a little piece added to the biological mosaic.

"It makes you realize how difficult it is to conserve endangered species, when we don't have a grasp on where all the common species are," Steele says.

For good measure, some friends of Steele's recently made the first sightings of squirrel treefrogs in Hampton, at Sandy Bottom Nature Park. So that's added to the biosphere map, too.

Steele smiles at the irony of finding all this wildlife in Port Warwick. "There are thousands of frogs here, and this is an area that's supposed to be a return to urban living.

"People can live in an urban environment and walk a few hundred feet out their doors and listen to all these amphibian species."

On a previous night, Steele says, a few dozen people were sitting outdoors at a Port Warwick restaurant not far away, "and they had to shout to hear each other" over the sound of the frogs.

Sixteen species of frogs live on the Peninsula, says Steele, who also edits the newsletter of the Virginia Herpetological Society. (Herpetology is the study of amphibians and reptiles.)

But while these local frogs may be plentiful, concerned biologists are keeping a close watch on such amphibians. The number of frogs in the world has been declining in recent years.

Loss of habitat and a fungus epidemic in other areas are considered to be major causes.

Frogs are especially sensitive to their surroundings, Steele says.

"They're sensitive animals. They absorb water through their skin. Anything they sit on, they absorb.

"It would be analogous to us walking around dragging our tongues on the ground."

The specter of global warming is a worry, too.

Hotter summers could make the shallow water in these ponds too hot for the frogs to breed in, he says.

On this particular evening, the frogs are staying out of sight. Steele sweeps a net though water-filled ditches trying to catch one but in vain.

"They're really good at hiding," he says.

They can be heard all around, though. Steele's graduate study field is frog calls. He has about 800 recorded hours of them, collected at Beaverdam Park in Gloucester.

"We've got a thousand of them here," he says. "It's kind of great that nature persists, despite human disturbance." *

SQUIRREL TREEFROG

The squirrel treefrog (Hyla squirella) is found in Tidewater Virginia around and south of the James River. It breeds in shallow ponds and ditches. Adults average 1 to 11/2 inches long. Colors vary, from green to yellow to brown. They are often found near houses, where they feed on insects attracted to lights. The frog's name derives from its "rain call," which has been likened to a squirrel's "churr." Source: Web sites recommended by Kory Steele